“I’ll tell Miss Snelgrove Mrs. Tidwell asked if we have the Dainty Debutante girdle in extra large. Looking for it will keep her in the workroom till well after closing.”
“But what if she finds it?”
“She won’t. We only had one, and I’ve already sent it out to Mrs. Tidwell.”
Marjorie was as good as her word, and Polly was able to leave half an hour early, which was wonderful since she’d decided the only way to ensure her making it to the drop was to walk. She couldn’t risk being caught underground again, and a bus would have to pull over and stop if the sirens went. The raids weren’t till nearly nine tonight, but after last night she wasn’t taking any chances.
I hope it isn’t raining, she thought.
It wasn’t, but as she walked toward Marble Arch, fog began drifting in, and by the time she turned off Bayswater, it was even thicker than it had been the night she came through. She could only see a few houses’ distance, and as she approached Lampden Road, ghostly outlines of its buildings. The fog made them look unfamiliar, at once far off and looming.
They were unfamiliar. She must have turned a street too soon, for these weren’t the buildings that lined Lampden Road-the chemist’s with its bow windows and the row of shops. They were warehouses of some kind, windowless brick edifices with a single half-timbered house wedged in among them.
She walked toward them, looking for a familiar landmark, the curve of the road, or, if the fog was too thick for that, the spire of St. George’s. The fog had completely distorted distances. The warehouses still looked far away, even though she was nearly to the corner. And she should be able to see the spire from here. Could she have somehow got turned around? The street ahead couldn’t be Lampden Road. It was much too broad-
She reached the corner and stopped, staring across the road. She had been right about the buildings being too far away. She was looking at the ones that faced the next street over. The entire row of buildings which should be in front of them was gone, collapsed into a tangled heap of roof slates and timbers and brick, exposing the backs of the buildings behind them.
It must have been an HE. And Badri had been right. It was easy to lose one’s bearings after a bombing. She had no idea what part of the road this was. She looked down toward where St. George’s and the curve of the road should lie, but the fog was too thick-she couldn’t see either one.
And nothing looked familiar. She looked across at the row of warehouses. They didn’t seem damaged. And the second one from the corner had a wooden staircase angling down its back, and it hadn’t fallen down, and if it was as ramshackle as the one in the alley next to the drop, one good hard push could have collapsed it, let alone the concussion from a bomb.
She turned to look at the buildings behind her on this side of the road. They hadn’t been damaged either. Not even the windows of the butcher’s shop had been broken. Blast does do peculiar things, she thought. The windows of the greengrocer’s beyond the butcher’s hadn’t been broken either, and the baskets of cabbages sitting outside the door-
It can’t be the same grocer’s, she thought, running up the road toward it. But it was. The awning above the door said, “T. Tubbins, Greengrocer.” But if this is the same greengrocer’s, then-
She stopped, staring not at the shop, but across the street at the rubble and the row of warehouses behind it. At the narrow passage between the second and third buildings from the end, filled with barrels. And at the Union Jack chalked on the brick wall and the words scrawled beneath it, clearly visible even through the fog and the falling darkness: “London kan take it.”
Wars are not won by evacuations.
Dunkirk, France-29 May 1940
MIKE MUST HAVE BEEN KNOCKED UNCONSCIOUS BY THE bomb’s concussion, because when he came to, the light from the flares had faded, and he was trussed up in a rope and being hauled up the side of the Lady Jane. “Are you all right?” Jonathan asked anxiously.
“Yes,” he said, though he seemed to have trouble hanging on to the railing as Jonathan and one of the soldiers helped him over the side, their hands under his arms.
“Hypothermia,” Mike explained, and then remembered he was in 1940. “It’s the cold. Can I have a blanket?”
Jonathan ran off to get one while the soldier helped him over to a locker-he seemed to be having trouble walking, too-so he could sit down. “Are you certain you’re not hurt?” the soldier asked, peering at him in the darkness. “That bomb looked like it fell bang on top of you.”
“I’m fine,” Mike said, sinking down onto the wooden locker. “Go tell the Commander I cleared the propeller. Tell him to start the engine.” Then he must have blacked out again for a few minutes because Jonathan already had the blanket around him and the engine had started up, though they weren’t moving yet.
“We thought you were a goner,” Jonathan said. “It took ages to find you. And when we did, you were floating face-down with your arms out, just like that body we saw. We thought-”
He looked up, and so did Mike. The sky overhead blossomed with flares, shedding greenish-white sparks as they fell.
“For what we are about to receive…” one of the soldiers muttered.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” Mike said, getting up to go help the Commander guide the boat out of the harbor and then sitting shakily back down. “Go navigate! We’ve got to get out of here before they come back.”
“I think we’re too late,” Jonathan said, and Mike looked frightenedly up at the sky, but Jonathan was pointing out across the water. “They’ve seen us.”
“Who?” Mike staggered over to the railing and looked at the mole, where soldiers were running toward them, wading, swimming out to the Lady Jane through the green-lit water. Hundreds of them, thousands of them. Because I blacked out and they had to waste time rescuing me, Mike thought. “Go tell your grandfather to cast off,” he shouted. “Now!”
“And just leave them?” Jonathan asked, his eyes wide.
“Yes. We don’t have any other choice. They’ll swamp the boat. Go!” Mike shouted and gave him a push, then staggered back to the stern, hanging on to the rail for support, to pull up the rope they’d let down to him.
But it was too late. The soldiers were already climbing up it hand over hand, grabbing for the sides, clambering over the rail. “You’ll swamp her!” Mike shouted, trying to untie the rope, but they weren’t listening to him, they were swarming aboard like pirates, scrambling over each other, jumping down onto the deck.
“Move to the other side!” Mike shouted, clinging to the rail. He was still too wobbly to stand. “You’ll tip her over!” He shoved at them, trying to move them forward into the bow, but no one was listening.
The deck began to slant. “Listen! Move-”
“Duck!” somebody yelled, and the men flattened themselves against the deck. The first bomb hit close enough to spray water all over them, and the second just as close on the other side. The hordes of soldiers still on the mole ran back along it, and the ones in the water began to swim back toward shore.
A few were still swimming out to them, still climbing aboard, but the bombs provided intervals, and the threat of strafing made it possible to convince some of the soldiers to go below. “Space yourselves in the hold,” Mike told them, working his way along the rail. “Not all on one side. And no moving around. Sit down and stay put.”
“Stop sending them forward!” Jonathan shouted back to him over the crowd. “There’s no room up here!”
“There’s no room back here either!” Mike yelled. “Tell the Commander to get out of here before we take on any more.” The launch was already riding perilously low in the water, and God knew how much water was in the
